s to-day. Perhaps we are only flattering
ourselves it has been a rest. But if it has--is that, do you think,
quite wise?'

He leant forward and hid his face in his hands. 'It's because--it's
because it's the only "must" I can see.'

'But even "musts"--well, we have to be sure even of "musts," haven't
we? Are YOU?' She glanced up and for an instant their eyes met, and the
falling water seemed to be sounding out of a distance so remote it might
be but the echo of a dream. She stooped once more over her work.

'Supposing,' he said very slowly, and almost as if speaking to himself,
'supposing Sabathier--and you know he's merely like a friend now one
mustn't be seen talking to--supposing he came back; what then?'

'Oh, but Sabathier's gone: he never really came. It was only a fancy--a
mood. It was only you--another you.'

'Who was that yesterday, then?'

She glanced at him swiftly and knew the question was but a venture.

'Yesterday?'

'Oh, very well,' he said fretfully, 'you too! But if he did, if he did,
come really back: "prey" and all?'

'What is the riddle?' she said, taking a deep breath and facing him
brightly.

'Would MY "must" still be HIS?' The face he raised to her, as he leaned
forward under the direct light of the sun, was so colourless, cadaverous
and haggard, the thought crossed her mind that it did indeed seem little
more than a shadowy mask that but one hour of darkness might dispel.

'You said, you know, we did win through. Why then should we be even
thinking of defeat now?'

'"We"!'

'Oh no, you!' she cried triumphantly.

'You do not answer my question.'

'Nor you mine! It WAS a glorious victory. Is there the ghost of a reason
why you should cast your mind back? Is there, now?'

'Only,' said Lawford, looking patiently up into her face, 'only because
I love you': and listened in the silence to the words as one may watch a
bird that has escaped for ever and irrevocably out of its cage, steadily
flying on and on till lost to sight.

For an instant the grey eyes faltered. 'But that, surely,' she began
in a low voice, still steadily sewing, 'that was our compact last
night--that you should let me help, that you should trust me just as you
trusted the mother years ago who came in the little cart with the shaggy
dusty pony to the homesick boy watching at the window. Perhaps,' she
added, her fingers trembling, 'in this odd shuffle of souls and faces,
I AM that mother, and most frightfully anx